Posts Tagged 'Global Markets'

The widespread adoption of smartphones and tablets has dramatically changed the way the world accesses the Internet recent years. Continued declines in smartphone cost will drive penetration even further into economies that have not had the buying power to join the Internet revolution. Over the next decade we'll see this market opportunity explode as these new users come on line. We are seeing the emergence of a new "middle class" being empowered by technology with the latest mobile applications and breakthroughs.

The power of the Internet resides in its ability to transcend borders. Application developers in Indonesia or Vietnam can happily find a virtual home selling into markets in North America without leaving the comfort of their sofas. Economic activity has been westward facing, serving the growing markets in developed nations with near universality of broadband access. Most consumers in developed countries have access to wireline broadband access (DSL, fiber, cable, etc.), while developing nations have suffered from under investment on this front. Much of this access has been driven by an economic imperative: Households in these markets demand fast connections, and they have the disposable income to pay for those connections. Conditions have not been the same in developing nations, but the world is changing.

According to the ITU, there were 4,000 broadband Internet users in Indonesia in 2000. In 2011, there are 2.7 million. The picture starts to get interesting when you consider smartphone penetration. An adsmobi report shows that Indonesia had an estimated 30.7-million smartphone users at the end of 2012, and that number is expected to nearly triple to 81.5 million by 2015. In the eleven-year span between 2000 to 2011, the number of smartphone users in Turkey went from zero to over 7 million. A year later in 2012, that number more than doubled to around 15 million — nearly 20% population penetration. This trend is playing itself out globally, the digital divide is getting smaller and the opportunity to provide service in these markets is getting larger.

What does that mean for you and your business online? You want to capitalize on these burgeoning markets and build your service or application to easily reach a global audience and scale to meet that audience's demand, but that's a pretty daunting task. You need to deliver a seamless experience to millions of users who live thousands of miles away and who may be accessing a completely different Internet than your users down the street.

The idea that large groups of users are accessing a "completely different Internet" may seem like an overly dramatic way to talk about their unique preferences and cultural/language differences, but I use that phrase very literally. As the global allocation of IPv4 addresses dwindles, Internet Service Providers will bring new users online via IPv6 addresses, and those users will only be able to access sites and applications that have IPv6 addresses. IPv6 addresses can run dual-stack with IPv4 addresses — the same content can be delivered via either protocol from the same server — but many legacy hosting providers haven't made the necessary upgrades to make every piece of network hardware IPv6-compatible.

As you consider the challenge of preparing for a global boom in users, keep these suggestions in mind:

Leverage a global infrastructure. You might not have the capital to build infrastructure around the world, so look for an IaaS partner that can provide resources in your targeted geographic markets. You need to be able to easily spin up IT resources where and when you need them to meet regional demand.

Get close to your end users. Proximity to customers and new markets is vital. You might not be able to host a server next door to every one of your users, but if you can get those users on your network quickly, they'll have the same kind of high-speed access to the content in your closest data center.

Don't pay too much. A simple pay-as-you-go service model helps the process of planning and growing strategically. You're able to focus on what you do best while avoiding the pitfalls of managing IT hardware.

Prepare for the future. Overarching technology concerns like the one I mentioned about IPv6 might not be very high on your list of priorities because they're just theoretical ... until they're not. By preparing for those future challenges, you'll save yourself a lot of grief when those "future" challenges eventually become "present" challenges.

SoftLayer has 13 data centers strategically located around the world, and we offer the same on-demand provisioning and month-to-month contracts in all of our facilities. We're continuing to build our network infrastructure to bring users onto our network via one of our network Points of Presence (PoPs) within 40 milliseconds from anywhere in the world. Our platform is IPv6-capable, and we have a team of people focused on finding and addressing future technological concerns before they impact our customers.

To find out more about how your business can go global with SoftLayer, check out our network overview and learn more about what differentiates SoftLayer's data centers from the competition's.